The first work about the Stalinist camps, published in the USSR. The description of an ordinary day of an ordinary prisoner is not yet a complete account of the horrors of the Gulag, but it also has a deafening effect and strikes at the inhuman system that spawned the camps.

comments: Lev Oborin

What is this book about?

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, also known as Shch-854, has been in the camp for nine years. The story (in terms of volume - more like a story) describes his usual day from wake up to lights out: this day is full of both hardships and small joys (as far as one can talk about joys in the camp), clashes with the camp authorities and conversations with comrades in misfortune, selfless work and the little tricks that make up the struggle for survival. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was, in fact, the first work about the camps that appeared in the Soviet press - for millions of readers it became a revelation, a long-awaited word of truth and concise encyclopedia life of the GULAG.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 1953 year

Laski Collection / Getty Images

When was it written?

Solzhenitsyn conceived a story about one day of a prisoner back in the camp, in 1950-1951. Direct work on the text began on May 18, 1959 and lasted 45 days. By the same time - the end of the 1950s - the work on the second edition of the novel "In the First Circle", the collection of materials for the future "Red Wheel", the concept of the "Gulag Archipelago", the writing of "Matronin's Dvor" and several "Little Children"; in parallel, Solzhenitsyn teaches physics and astronomy at the Ryazan school and is being treated for the consequences of cancer. In early 1961, Solzhenitsyn edited One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, softening some of the details so that the text would become at least theoretically “passable” for the Soviet press.

House in Ryazan where Solzhenitsyn lived from 1957 to 1965

In the summer of 1963, "One Day ..." appears in a secret CIA report on the cultural policy of the USSR: the special services know that Khrushchev personally authorized the publication

How is it written?

Solzhenitsyn sets a strict time frame for himself: the story begins with a wake-up and ends with a fall to sleep. This allows the author to show the essence of the camp routine through many details, to reconstruct typical events. “He didn’t build, in essence, any external plot, didn’t try to tie up the action more abruptly and unleash it more effectively, didn’t stir up interest in his narration with the tricks of literary intrigue,” the critic Vladimir Lakshin 1 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., Preambles, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M .: OOO "Agency" KRPA Olymp ", 2004. S. 118. ⁠ : The boldness and honesty of the descriptions hold the reader's attention.

"One day ..." adjoins the tradition of skaz, that is, images of oral, non-book speech. In this way, the effect of direct perception through the eyes of the hero is achieved. At the same time, Solzhenitsyn mixes different linguistic layers in the story, reflecting the social reality of the camp: jargon and abuse of prisoners coexist with the bureaucracy of abbreviations, the popular vernacular of Ivan Denisovich - with different registers of the intelligent speech of Caesar Markovich and cavtoranga Captain of the second rank. ⁠ Buinovsky.

How could I not have known about Ivan Shukhov? How could he not feel that on this quiet frosty morning he, along with thousands of others, was led out under escort with dogs outside the camp gate into a snowy field - to the object?

Vladimir Lakshin

What influenced her?

Solzhenitsyn's own camp experience and testimonies of other camp prisoners. Two large traditions of Russian literature of a different order: essay (influenced the concept and structure of the text) and fairy tale, from Leskov to Remizov (influenced the style, language of the characters and the narrator).

In January 1963, One Day of Ivan Denisovich was published in Roman Gazeta with a circulation of 700,000 copies

First edition of the story in Novy Mir. 1962 year

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” was published thanks to a unique combination of circumstances: there was a text by the author who survived in the camp and miraculously recovered from a serious illness; there was an influential editor who was ready to fight for this text; there was a request from the authorities to support anti-Stalinist exposés; there were personal ambitions for Khrushchev, for whom it was important to emphasize his role in de-Stalinization.

At the beginning of November 1961, after long doubts - is it time or not - Solzhenitsyn handed over the manuscript Raisa Orlova Raisa Davydovna Orlova (1918-1989) - writer, philologist, human rights activist. From 1955 to 1961 she worked in the journal "Foreign Literature". Together with her husband Lev Kopelev, she defended Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 1980, Orlova and Kopelev emigrated to Germany. In emigration, their joint book of memoirs We Lived in Moscow was published, the novels Doors Open Slowly, Hemingway in Russia. The book of Orlova's memoirs "Memories of the Unpassed Time" was published posthumously. ⁠ , the wife of his friend and ex-boyfriend Lev Kopelev Lev Zinovievich Kopelev (1912-1997) - writer, literary critic, human rights activist. During the war, he was a propagandist officer and a translator from German, in 1945, a month before the end of the war, he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison "for propaganda of bourgeois humanism" - Kopelev criticized looting and violence against the civilian population in East Prussia. In "Marfinskaya Sharashka" he met Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Since the mid-1960s, Kopelev has been participating in the human rights movement: speaks out and signs letters in defense of dissidents, distributes books through samizdat. In 1980 he was stripped of his citizenship and emigrated to Germany with his wife, writer Raisa Orlova. Among Kopelev's books - "To keep forever", "And I made myself an idol", in co-authorship with his wife were written memoirs "We lived in Moscow." ⁠ , later displayed in the novel "The First Circle" under the name of Rubin. Orlova brought the manuscript to the "New World" editor and criticism Anne Berser Anna Samoilovna Berzer (real name - Asya; 1917-1994) - critic, editor. Berzer worked as an editor for Literaturnaya Gazeta, Sovetsky Pisatel publishing house, Znamya and Moscow magazines. From 1958 to 1971 she was the editor of Novy Mir: she worked with texts by Solzhenitsyn, Grossman, Dombrovsky, Trifonov. Berser was known as a brilliant editor and author of witty critical articles. In 1990, Berser's book Farewell, dedicated to Grossman, was published. ⁠ , and she showed the story to the editor-in-chief of the magazine - the poet Alexander Tvardovsky, bypassing his deputies. Shaken, Tvardovsky launched an entire campaign to get the story to print. A chance for this was given by the recent Khrushchev revelations on XX and XXII Congresses of the CPSU On February 14, 1956, at the XX Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev made a closed report condemning the personality cult of Stalin. At the 22nd Congress, in 1961, anti-Stalinist rhetoric became even harsher: words were publicly spoken about Stalin's arrests, torture, crimes against the people, it was proposed to take his body out of the Mausoleum. After this congress, the settlements named after the leader were renamed, and the monuments to Stalin were eliminated. ⁠ , personal acquaintance of Tvardovsky with Khrushchev, the general atmosphere of the thaw. Tvardovsky secured positive reviews from several major writers - including Paustovsky, Chukovsky and Ehrenburg, who was in favor.

This streak was so happy before: everyone was given ten by the comb. And from the forty-ninth, such a streak went - everyone at twenty-five, regardless

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The leadership of the CPSU proposed several amendments. Solzhenitsyn agreed to some - in particular, to mention Stalin in order to emphasize his personal responsibility for the terror and the Gulag. However, throw out the words of Brigadier Tyurin: “You are, Creator, in heaven. You endure for a long time and hurt you painfully "Solzhenitsyn refused:" ... I would give in if it were at my own expense or at literary expense. But then they offered to yield at the expense of God and at the expense of the peasant, and this I never promised do" 2 Solzhenitsyn A.I. Butting a calf with an oak: Essays on literary life. Moscow: Consent, 1996.P. 44. ⁠ .

There was a danger that the story, which was already sold in copies, would "leak" abroad and be published there - this would close the possibility of publication in the USSR. “That it did not sail to the West in almost a year is a miracle no less than the publication itself in the USSR,” Solzhenitsyn noted. In the end, in 1962, Tvardovsky was able to convey the story to Khrushchev - the secretary general was excited by the story, and he authorized its publication, and for this he had to argue with the top of the Central Committee. The story was published in the November 1962 issue of Novy Mir with a circulation of 96,900 copies; later 25,000 more were reprinted - but this was not enough for everyone, “One Day ...” was distributed in lists and photocopies. In 1963, "One Day ..." was reissued "Roman newspaper" One of the largest circulation of Soviet literary publications, published since 1927. The idea was to publish works of art for the people, as Lenin put it, "in the form of a proletarian newspaper." The "Roman Gazeta" published the works of the main Soviet writers - from Gorky and Sholokhov to Belov and Rasputin, as well as the texts of foreign authors: Voinich, Remarque, Hasek. ⁠ with a circulation of 700,000 copies; this was followed by a separate book edition (100,000 copies). When Solzhenitsyn fell into disgrace, all these publications began to be withdrawn from libraries, and until perestroika, One Day ..., like other works by Solzhenitsyn, was distributed only in samizdat and tamizdat.

Alexander Tvardovsky. 1950 year. Editor-in-chief of Novy Mir, where One Day of Ivan Denisovich was first published

Anna Berser. 1971 year. Editor of Novy Mir, who handed over Solzhenitsyn's manuscript to Alexander Tvardovsky

Vladimir Lakshin. 1990s. Deputy editor-in-chief of "Novy Mir", author of the article "Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes" (1964)

How was she received?

The supreme benevolence for Solzhenitsyn's story was the guarantee of benevolent responses. In the first months, 47 reviews appeared in the Soviet press with loud headlines: "To be a citizen ...", "In the name of man", "Humanity", "Severe truth", "In the name of truth, in the name of life" (the author of the latter is an odious critic Vladimir Ermilov, who participated in the persecution of many writers, including Platonov). The motive of many reviews is that repression is a thing of the past: for example, a front-line writer Grigory Baklanov Grigory Yakovlevich Baklanov (real name - Fridman; 1923-2009) - writer and screenwriter. He went to the front at the age of 18, fought in the artillery, ended the war with the rank of lieutenant. Since the early 1950s he has been publishing stories and stories about the war; his story "A Pad of the Earth" (1959) was sharply criticized for the "trench truth", the novel "July 41" (1964), which described Stalin's destruction of the high command of the Red Army, was not reprinted for 14 years after the first publication. During the years of perestroika, Baklanov headed the Znamya magazine, under his leadership, for the first time in the USSR, Bulgakov's Dog's Heart and Zamyatin's We were published. ⁠ calls his review "So that it never happens again." In the first, "ceremonial" review in Izvestia ("About the past for the sake of the future") Konstantin Simonov asked rhetorical questions: "Whose evil will, whose boundless arbitrariness could tear these Soviet people - farmers, builders, workers, soldiers - from their families, from work, finally, from the war against fascism, to put them outside the law, outside of society? " Simonov concluded: “I think that A. Solzhenitsyn showed himself in his story as a true assistant to the Party in the sacred and necessary cause of the struggle against the cult of the individual and its consequences " 3 The word makes its way: Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974 / entry. L. Chukovskaya, comp. V. Glotser and E. Chukovskaya. M .: Russkiy put, 1998.S. 19, 21. ⁠ ... Other reviewers inscribed the story in a large realistic tradition, compared Ivan Denisovich with other representatives of the “people” in Russian literature, for example, with Platon Karataev from “War and Peace”.

Perhaps the most important Soviet review was an article by the Novy Mir critic Vladimir Lakshin "Ivan Denisovich, His Friends and Foes" (1964). Analyzing "One Day ...", Lakshin writes: "The time of the action is precisely indicated in the story - January 1951. And I don't know about the others, but reading the story, I kept thinking back to what I was doing, how I lived at that time.<…> But how could I not have known about Ivan Shukhov? How could he not feel that on this quiet frosty morning he, along with thousands of others, was led out under escort with dogs outside the camp gate into a snowy field - to object? " 4 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., Preambles, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M .: LLC "Agency" KRPA Olymp ", 2004. S. 123. ⁠ Anticipating the end of the thaw, Lakshin tried to protect the story from possible persecution, making reservations about its "partisanship", and objected to critics who reproached Solzhenitsyn for the fact that Ivan Denisovich "cannot ... claim to be a popular type of our era" (that is, does not fit into normative socialist realist model) that his "whole philosophy is reduced to one thing: to survive!" Lakshin demonstrates - right from the text - examples of Shukhov's resilience, preserving his personality.

Prisoner of Vorkutlag. Komi Republic, 1945.
Laski Diffusion / Getty Images

Valentin Kataev called "One Day ..." false: "protest is not shown." Korney Chukovsky objected: “But this is the whole truth story: the executioners created such conditions that people lost the slightest concept of justice ...<…> ... And Kataev says: how dare he not protest, even under the covers. And how much did Kataev protested during the Stalinist regime? He composed slave hymns, like everything" 5 Chukovsky K. I. Diary: 1901-1969: In 2 volumes. Moscow: OLMA-Press Starry world, 2003. T. 2. C. 392. ⁠ ... Anna Akhmatova's oral feedback is known: “This story is about to be read and learned by heart - every citizen of all two hundred million citizens of the Soviet Union " 6 Chukovskaya L.K. Notes about Anna Akhmatova: in 3 volumes.M .: Consent, 1997.Vol. 2.P. 512. ⁠ .

After the release of "One Day ...", the editorial office of "New World" and the author himself began to receive mountains of letters with gratitude and personal stories. Former prisoners asked Solzhenitsyn: "You should write a large and equally truthful book on this topic, where you can display not one day, but whole years"; “If you started this big business, continue it and further" 7 "Dear Ivan Denisovich! .." Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M .: Russkiy put, 2012.S. 142, 177. ⁠ ... The materials sent by Solzhenitsyn's correspondents formed the basis of the Gulag Archipelago. Varlam Shalamov, the author of the great Kolyma stories, and in the future, an ill-wisher of Solzhenitsyn, accepted with delight "One day ...": "The story is like poetry - everything is perfect in it, everything is expedient."

The prisoner's Duma - and that one is not free, everything comes back to that, everything is stirring again: will they not feel for a ration in the mattress? Will the medical unit be released in the evening? will the captain be jailed or not?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Of course, there were also negative reviews: from Stalinists who justified terror, from people who feared that the publication would damage the international prestige of the USSR, from those who were shocked by the harsh language of the heroes. Sometimes these motivations were combined. One reader, a former free foreman in places of detention, was indignant: who gave Solzhenitsyn the right to “indiscriminately criticize both the order existing in the camp and the people who are called upon to guard the prisoners ...<…> The hero of the story and the author do not like these rules, but they are necessary and necessary for the Soviet state! " Another reader asked: “So tell me, why, like banners, unfold your dirty pants in front of the world?<…> I cannot perceive this work, because it humiliates my dignity of the Soviet man " 8 "Dear Ivan Denisovich! .." Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M .: Russkiy put, 2012.S. 50-55, 75. ⁠ ... In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn also quotes indignant letters from former employees of the punitive organs, up to such self-justifications: “We, the performers, are also people, we also went for heroism: we did not always shoot those who fell and, thus, risked our service " 9 Solzhenitsyn A. I. GULAG Archipelago: In 3 volumes. M .: Center "New World", 1990. T. 3. P. 345. ⁠ .

In emigration, the release of One Day ... was perceived as significant event: The story was not only strikingly different in tone from the Soviet prose available in the West, but also confirmed the information known to the emigrants about the Soviet camps.

In the West, "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" was greeted with attention - among left intellectuals, according to Solzhenitsyn, he sowed the first doubts about the progressiveness of the Soviet experiment: “Only because everyone has lost their tongues because it was published with the permission of the Central Committee in Moscow, shocked. " But this also made some reviewers doubt the literary quality of the text: “This is a political sensation, not a literary one.<…> If we change the scene to South Africa or Malaysia ... we get an honest, but crudely written essay about completely incomprehensible people " 10 Magner T. F. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // The Slavic and East European Journal. 1963. Vol. 7. No. 4. Pp. 418-419. ⁠ ... For other reviewers, politics did not overshadow the ethical and aesthetic significance of the story. American Slavist Franklin Reeve Franklin Reeve (1928-2013) - writer, poet, translator. In 1961, Reeve became one of the first American exchange professors to come to the USSR; in 1962 he was the translator of the poet Robert Frost during his meeting with Khrushchev. In 1970, Reeve translated Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Nobel speech. From 1967 to 2002 he taught literature at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Reeve is the author of over 30 books: poems, novels, plays, critical articles, translations from Russian. ⁠ expressed concern that "One Day" will be read exclusively as "another speech at the international political Olympics", a sensational exposure of totalitarian communism, while the meaning of the story is much broader. The critic compares Solzhenitsyn with Dostoevsky, and “One Day” with “Odyssey”, seeing in the story “the deepest affirmation of human value and human dignity”: “In this book, an“ ordinary ”person in inhuman conditions is studied to the depths " 11 Reeve F. D. The House of the Living // Kenyon Review. 1963. Vol. 25. No. 2. Pp. 356-357. ⁠ .

Dishes of prisoners in the forced labor camp

Prisoners of Vorkutlag. Komi Republic, 1945

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For a short time, Solzhenitsyn became a recognized master of Soviet literature. He was admitted to the Writers' Union, he published several more works (the most notable is the long story "Matryonin's yard"), the possibility of awarding him with the Lenin Prize for "One Day ..." was seriously discussed. Solzhenitsyn was invited to several "meetings of the leaders of the party and government with figures of culture and art" (and left scathing memories of this). But since the mid-1960s, when the thaw began to curtail under Khrushchev, censorship stopped letting in new Solzhenitsyn's works: the newly rewritten In the First Circle and Cancer Ward did not appear in the Soviet press until perestroika, but were published in the West. "An accidental breakthrough with" Ivan Denisovich "did not in the least reconcile the System with me and did not promise an easy movement on," he later explained Solzhenitsyn 12 Solzhenitsyn A.I. Butting a calf with an oak: Essays on literary life. M .: Consent, 1996.S. 50. ⁠ ... At the same time, he worked on his main book - "The Gulag Archipelago", a unique and scrupulous - as far as circumstances allowed the author - a study of the Soviet punitive system. In 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize - primarily for "One Day of Ivan Denisovich", and in 1974 he was deprived of his Soviet citizenship and sent abroad - the writer will live in exile for 20 years, remaining an active publicist and increasingly appearing in the annoying the role of teacher or prophet.

After perestroika, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was reprinted dozens of times, including as part of the 30-volume collected works of Solzhenitsyn (Moscow: Vremya, 2007) - the most authoritative at the moment. In 1963, an English television play was shot based on the work, in 1970 - a full-fledged film adaptation (joint production of Norway and Great Britain; Solzhenitsyn reacted positively to the film). One Day has been staged in the theater more than once. The first Russian film adaptation should appear in the coming years: in April 2018, Gleb Panfilov began filming a film based on "Ivan Denisovich". Since 1997, "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" has been included in the compulsory school curriculum for literature.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn. 1962 year

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"One Day" - the first Russian work about the Great Terror and the camps?

Not. The first prose work about the Great Terror is considered to be the story of Lydia Chukovskaya "Sofya Petrovna", written back in 1940 (Chukovskaya's husband, the outstanding physicist Matvey Bronstein, was arrested in 1937 and shot in 1938). In 1952, a novel by the second wave emigrant Nikolai Narokov, Imaginary Values, was published in New York, describing the height of Stalin's terror. Stalin's camps are mentioned in the epilogue of Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. Varlam Shalamov, whose Kolyma Tales is often contrasted with Solzhenitsyn's prose, began writing them in 1954. The main part of Akhmatova's Requiem was written in 1938-1940 (at that time her son Lev Gumilyov was in the camp). In the Gulag itself, works of art were also created - especially poems that were easier to remember.

It is usually said that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was the first published work about the Gulag. A caveat is needed here. On the eve of the publication of One Day, the Izvestia editorial board, already aware of Tvardovsky's struggle for Solzhenitsyn, published a story George Shelesta Georgy Ivanovich Shelest (real name - Malykh; 1903-1965) is a writer. In the early 1930s, Shelest wrote stories about the Civil War and partisans, worked for Trans-Baikal and Far Eastern newspapers. In 1935 he moved to the Murmansk region, where he worked as the editorial secretary of the Kandalaksha Communist. In 1937, the writer was accused of organizing an armed uprising and sent to the Lake Camp; 17 years later he was rehabilitated. After his release, Shelest left for Tajikistan, where he worked on the construction of a hydroelectric power station, where he also began writing prose on the camp theme. ⁠ "Nugget" - about the communists, repressed in 1937 and washing gold in Kolyma ("At the editorial meeting of Izvestia, Adzhubey was angry that it was not his newspaper that" opened "an important topic " 13 Solzhenitsyn A.I. Butting a calf with an oak: Essays on literary life. M .: Consent, 1996.P. 45. ⁠ ). Tvardovsky, in a letter to Solzhenitsyn, complained: “... For the first time, such words as“ opera ”,“ sexot ”,“ morning prayer ”, etc., were introduced into the everyday life of the printed page. than" 14 "Dear Ivan Denisovich! .." Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M .: Russkiy put, 2012.S. 20. ⁠ ... Solzhenitsyn's appearance of Shelest's story at first upset, “but then I thought: what is he in the way?<…> "Discovery" of the topic - I think they did not succeed. And the words? Why, they were not invented by us, you cannot take a patent for them worth " 15 "Dear Ivan Denisovich! .." Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M .: Russian way, 2012. P. 25. ⁠ ... The emigre magazine Posev in 1963 spoke of Samorodko contemptuously, believing that it was an attempt “on the one hand, to assert the myth that in the camps good Chekists and party members first of all suffered and died from the evil uncle Stalin; on the other hand, through showing the mood of these good Chekists and party members, create a myth that in the camps, enduring injustice and torment, Soviet people, by their faith in the regime, by their "love" for it, remained Soviet people " 16 The brigade commander of the Cheka-OGPU "recalls" the camps ... // Posev. 1962. No. 51-52. P. 14. ⁠ ... In the finale of Shelest's story, the prisoners who found the gold nugget decide not to exchange it for food and makhorka, but to hand it over to their superiors and receive gratitude "for helping the Soviet people in difficult days" - of course, Solzhenitsyn does not have anything like that, although many prisoners of the Gulag really remained orthodox communists (Solzhenitsyn himself wrote about this in The Gulag Archipelago and the novel In the First Circle). Shelest's story went almost unnoticed: there were already rumors about the imminent publication of One Day ... and it was Solzhenitsyn's text that became a sensation. In a country where everyone knew about the camps, no one expected that the truth about them would be expressed publicly, in thousands of copies - even after the XX and XXII Congresses of the CPSU, at which repressions and the cult of Stalin's personality were condemned.

A forced labor camp in Karelia. 1940s

Is life in the camp truly depicted in One Day in Ivan Denisovich?

The main judges here were the former prisoners themselves, who praised "One Day ..." highly and wrote letters of thanks to Solzhenitsyn. Of course, there were some complaints and clarifications: in such a painful topic, Solzhenitsyn's comrades, unfortunately, were important in every detail. Some prisoners wrote that "the regime of the camp where Ivan Denisovich was sitting was out of the lungs." Solzhenitsyn confirmed this: the special camp in which Shukhov served his last years of imprisonment was not like the camp in Ust-Izhma, where Ivan Denisovich went, where he earned scurvy and lost his teeth.

Some reproached Solzhenitsyn for exaggerating the zek's zeal for work: “No one would risk leaving both himself and the brigade without food and continue to lay wall " 17 Abeluk E. S., Polivanov K. M. History of Russian literature of the XX century: A book for educated teachers and students: In 2 vols. M .: New literary review, 2009. P. 245. ⁠ , - however, Varlam Shalamov pointed out: “The enthusiasm for the work of Shukhov and other brigadiers is shown subtly and correctly when they put up the wall.<…> This passion for work is somewhat akin to the feeling of excitement when two hungry columns overtake each other.<…> It is possible that this kind of passion for work saves people. " “How can Ivan Denisovich survive ten years, day and night only cursing his work? After all, it is he who should hang himself on the very first bracket! " - wrote later Solzhenitsyn 18 Solzhenitsyn A. I. The GULAG Archipelago: In 3 volumes. Moscow: Center "New World", 1990. T. 2. P. 170. ⁠ ... He believed that such complaints came from the "former jerks Prisoners who got a privileged, "dust-free" position: cook, clerk, storekeeper, duty officer were called assholes in the camp. ⁠ and their never-seated intelligent friends. "

But none of the survivors of the Gulag reproached Solzhenitsyn for lying, for distorting reality. Evgenia Ginzburg, author of Steep Route, offering her manuscript to Tvardovsky, wrote about “One Day ...”: “Finally, people learned from the primary source about at least one day of the life that we led (in different versions) for 18 years” ... There were a lot of similar letters from prisoners, although One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich does not mention a tenth of the hardships and atrocities that were possible in the camps - Solzhenitsyn does this work in the GULAG Archipelago.

Barrack for Ponyshlag prisoners. Perm region, 1943

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Why did Solzhenitsyn choose such a title for the story?

The fact is that it was not Solzhenitsyn who chose him. The name under which Solzhenitsyn sent his manuscript to Novy Mir was Sch-854, the personal number of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov in the camp. This title focused all attention on the hero, but was unpronounceable. The story also had an alternative title or subtitle - "One Day of One Convict." Based on this option, the editor-in-chief of Novy Mir Tvardovsky proposed “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. Here, the focus is precisely on time, duration, the name turns out to be practically equal to the content. Solzhenitsyn easily accepted this apt option. It is interesting that Tvardovsky proposed a new name for "Matryonin's yard", which was originally called "A village is not worth a righteous man." Here, first of all, censorship considerations played a role.

Why one day and not a week, month or year?

Solzhenitsyn specifically resorts to restriction: during one day in the camp there are many dramatic, but generally routine events. “There were three thousand six hundred fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell”: this means that these events, familiar to Shukhov, are repeated from day to day, and one day is not much different from another. One day is enough to show the whole camp - at least that relatively “safe” camp under a relatively “safe” regime, in which Ivan Denisovich had to sit. Solzhenitsyn continues to enumerate numerous details of the life of the camp even after the culmination of the story - the laying of cinder blocks at the construction of a thermal power station: this emphasizes that the day does not end, there are still many burdensome minutes ahead, that life is not literature. Anna Akhmatova remarked: “In Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the details annoy me. The leg got numb, one shark died, put in the hook, didn’t put in the hook, etc. And that's all to nothing. And here every detail is needed and road" 19 Saraskina L. I. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Moscow: Young Guard, 2009. P. 504. ⁠ .

"The action takes place for a limited time in a confined space" - this is a characteristic sketch technique (you can recall the texts from "Physiological" collections Collections of works in the genre of everyday, moral-descriptive essay. One of the first "physiological" collections in Russia - "Ours, written off from nature by Russians", compiled by Alexander Bashutsky. The most famous is the almanac "Physiology of Petersburg" by Nekrasov and Belinsky, which became the manifesto of the natural school. ⁠ , individual works of Pomyalovsky, Nikolai Uspensky, Zlatovratsky). “One Day” is a productive and understandable model, which even after Solzhenitsyn is used by “survey”, “encyclopedic” texts that no longer adhere to a realistic agenda. During one day (and - practically all the time - in one closed space) an action is performed; Vladimir Sorokin is clearly writing his Day of the Oprichnik with an eye to Solzhenitsyn. (By the way, this is not the only similarity: the hypertrophied "folk" language of "Day of the Oprichnik" with its vernacular, neologisms, inversions refers to the language of Solzhenitsyn's story.) In Sorokin's "Blue Lard", lovers Stalin and Khrushchev discuss the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich", written by a former prisoner of “Crimean forced love camps” (LOVELAG); the leaders of the people are dissatisfied with the author's insufficient sadism - here Sorokin parodies the long-standing dispute between Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. Despite its obviously travesty character, the fictional novel retains the same “one-day” structure.

Map of forced labor camps in the USSR. 1945 year

Why does Ivan Denisovich have the number Sch-854?

The assignment of numbers, of course, is a sign of dehumanization - the prisoners officially do not have names, patronymics and surnames, they are addressed like this: “Ten forty-eight! Hands back! ”,“ Be five hundred and two! Pull up! " The attentive reader of Russian literature will recall here Zamyatin's We, where heroes bear names like D-503, O-90 - but in Solzhenitsyn we are faced not with dystopia, but with realistic detail. Number Shch-854 has no connection with Shukhov's real surname: the hero of One Day, cavalry rank Buinovsky, had Shch-311, and Solzhenitsyn himself had Shch-262. Convicts wore such numbers on their clothes (in the famous staged photograph of Solzhenitsyn, the number is sewn on a quilted jacket, trousers and a cap) and were obliged to monitor their condition - this brings numbers closer to the yellow stars that were prescribed to be worn by Jews in Nazi Germany (other persecuted persons had their marks Nazi groups - Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses ...). In German concentration camps, prisoners also wore numbers on their clothes, and in Auschwitz they were tattooed on their arm.

Numerical codes generally play an important role in the camp dehumanization 20 Pomorska K. The Overcoded World of Solzhenitsyn // Poetics Today. 1980. Vol. 1. No. 3, Special Issue: Narratology I: Poetics of Fiction. P. 165. ⁠ ... Describing the daily divorce, Solzhenitsyn speaks of the division of the prisoners into brigades. People are counted by their heads like cattle:

- First! Second! Third!

And the fives were separated and walked in separate chains, so at least from the back, at least from the front, look: five heads, five backs, ten legs.

And the second watchman is a controller, at the other railing he stands silently, only checking whether the score is correct.

Paradoxically, these seemingly worthless heads are important for accountability: “A man is more valuable than gold. One head behind the wire will not be enough - you will add your head there. " Thus, bureaucracy is one of the most significant among the repressive forces of the camp. Even the smallest, absurd details speak of this: for example, Shukhov's brother-in-law, Caesar, was not shaved off his mustache in the camp, because he has a mustache in the photograph in the investigation.

Vorkutlag punishment cell. Republic of Komi, 1930-40s

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A numbered padded jacket worn by inmates of forced labor camps

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What camp was Ivan Denisovich in?

The text of “One Day” makes it clear that this camp is a “convict camp”, relatively new (no one has served a full term in it yet). We are talking about a special camp - this is the name of the camps created for political prisoners, they received in 1948, although the hard labor was returned to the penitentiary system in 1943. The action of "One Day" takes place, as we remember, in 1951. From the previous camp odyssey of Ivan Denisovich, it follows that for most of his term he was in Ust-Izhma (Komi ASSR) together with criminals. His new fellow inmates believe that this is still not the worst fate The purpose of special camps was to isolate "enemies of the people" from ordinary prisoners. The regime in them was similar to the prison regime: bars on the windows, barracks locked at night, a ban on leaving the barracks outside of working hours and numbers on clothes. Such prisoners were used for particularly difficult jobs, for example in mines. However, despite the more difficult conditions, for many prisoners, the political zone was a better lot than the everyday camp, where the “political” were terrorized by the “thieves”. ⁠ : “You, Vanya, were in eight camps - in what camps? .. You were in the household, you lived there with the women. You didn't wear numbers. "

Indications to a specific place in the text of the story are only indirect: so, already on the first pages of the "old camp wolf" Kuzyomin says to the new arrivals: "Here, guys, the law is taiga." However, this saying was common in many Soviet camps. The temperature in winter in the camp where Ivan Denisovich is sitting can drop below forty degrees - but such climatic conditions also exist in many places: in Siberia, in the Urals, in Chukotka, in Kolyma, in the Far North. The name "Sotsgorodok" could give a clue (in the morning, Ivan Denisovich dreams that his brigade would not be sent there): there were several settlements with this name (all of them were built by prisoners) in the USSR, including in places with a harsh climate, but it was typical name and "depersonalizes" the scene. Rather, it should be assumed that the conditions of the special camp in which Solzhenitsyn himself sat are reflected in the camp of Ivan Denisovich: the Ekibastuz convict camp, later - part Steplag Camp for political prisoners, which was located in the Karaganda region of Kazakhstan. The Steplag prisoners worked in the mines: they mined coal, copper and manganese ores. In 1954, an uprising took place in the camp: five thousand prisoners demanded the arrival of a Moscow commission. The riot was brutally suppressed by the troops. Two years later, the Steplag was liquidated. ⁠ In Kazakhstan.

Forced Labor Camp Honor Board

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What was Ivan Denisovich imprisoned for?

Solzhenitsyn just writes about this openly: Ivan Denisovich fought (went to the front in 1941: "From a woman, I, citizen chief, was dismissed in 1941") and was taken into German captivity, then he broke through from there to his own - but the stay of the Soviet a soldier in German captivity was often equated with treason. According to NKVD 21 Krivosheev G.F. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the XX century: Statistical research / Ed. G.F.Krivosheeva. M .: OLMA-Press, 2001.S. 453-464. ⁠ , out of 1,836,562 prisoners of war who returned to the USSR, 233,400 people were sent to the Gulag on charges of treason. Such people were convicted under Article 58, paragraph 1a, of the RSFSR Criminal Code (“Treason to the Motherland”).

And it was like this: in February 1942, their entire army was surrounded in the North-West, and they didn't throw anything from the planes, and there were no planes either. We got to the point that they planted the hooves from the horses that died, soaked that cornea in water and ate. And there was nothing to shoot with. And so little by little the Germans caught and took them through the forests. And in a group of such one Shukhov spent a couple of days in captivity, in the same place, in the forests, and the five of them fled. And they also crept through the forests, through the swamps - by a miracle they got to their own. His submachine gunner only killed two of them on the spot, the third died from his wounds - two of them got there. They would be smarter - they would say that they wandered through the forests, and nothing would be for them. And they opened up: they say, from German captivity. From captivity ?? Your mother so! Fascist agents! And behind bars. There would have been five of them, maybe they would have compared the testimony, they would have believed it, but two of them could not: they agreed, they say, bastards, about the escape.

Counterintelligence agents beat Shukhov to sign a statement on himself (“if you don’t sign - a wooden pea jacket, if you sign it, you’ll live a little longer”). By the time the story takes place, Ivan Denisovich has been in the camp for the ninth year: he should be released in the middle of 1952. The penultimate phrase of the story - “There were three thousand six hundred fifty three days in his period from bell to bell” (let's pay attention to the long, “words”, writing out numbers) - does not allow us to say unequivocally that Ivan Denisovich will be released: after all, many prisoners those who served their term received a new one instead of release; Shukhov is also afraid of this.

Solzhenitsyn himself was convicted under paragraphs 10 and 11 of Article 58, for anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation in wartime: in personal conversations and correspondence, he allowed himself to criticize Stalin. On the eve of his arrest, when the fighting was already on the territory of Germany, Solzhenitsyn withdrew his battery from the German encirclement and was presented to the Order of the Red Banner, but on February 9, 1945 he was arrested in East Prussia.

The gates of the Vorkutlag coal mine. Komi Republic, 1945

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Prisoners at work. Ozerlag, 1950

What position does Ivan Denisovich occupy in the camp?

The social structure of the GULAG can be described in different ways. For example, before the establishment of special camps, the contingent of the camps was clearly divided into thieves and political, "Article 58" (in Ust-Izhma, Ivan Denisovich belongs, of course, to the latter). On the other hand, prisoners are divided into those who participate in "general work" and "idiots" - those who managed to take a more advantageous place, a relatively easy position: for example, get a job in the office or bread slicer, work in a specialty needed in camp (tailor, shoemaker, doctor, cook). Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago: “... Among the survivors, among the freed, idiots make up a very significant proportion; among the long-term members of the Fifty-Eighth - it seems to me - 9/10 ". Ivan Denisovich does not belong to "idiots" and treats them contemptuously (for example, he calls them generically "idiots"). “Choosing the hero of the camp story, I took a hard worker, I could not take anyone else, because only he can see the true relations of the camp (as soon as an infantry soldier can weigh the entire weight of the war, - but for some reason it is not he who writes his memoirs). This choice of the hero and some of the harsh statements in the story puzzled and offended other former idiots, "explained Solzhenitsyn.

Among the hard workers, as well as among the "idiots", there is a hierarchy. For example, "one of the last brigadiers" Fetyukov, in the wild - "a big boss in some office", does not enjoy anyone's respect; Ivan Denisovich silently calls him "Fetyukov-jackal". Another brigadier, Senka Klevshin, who had been to Buchenwald before the special camp, has a harder time than Shukhov, but he is about equal with him. Brigadier Tyurin occupies a separate position - he is the most idealized character in the story: always fair, able to shield his own people and save them from murderous conditions. Shukhov is aware of his subordination to the foreman (it is important here that according to the unwritten camp laws, the foreman does not belong to "idiots"), but for a short time he may feel equality with him: "Go, foreman! Go, you are needed there! - (Shukhov calls him Andrei Prokofievich, but now with his work he has caught up with the foreman. Not that he thought like this: "Here I am," but he just senses that it is so.) ".

Ivan Denisych! It is not necessary to pray for the parcel to be sent or for an extra portion of gruel. What is high among people is an abomination before God!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Even more subtle matter is the relationship of the “common man” Shukhov with convicts from among the intelligentsia. Both Soviet and uncensored criticism sometimes reproached Solzhenitsyn with insufficient respect for the intelligentsia (the author of the contemptuous term "education" actually gave a reason for this). “I am worried about the story and the attitude of common people, all these camp workers to those intellectuals who are still worried and still continue, even in the camp, to argue about Eisenstein, Meyerhold, cinema and literature, and the new play by Y. Zavadsky. .. Sometimes one feels the author's ironic, and sometimes contemptuous attitude towards such people, "wrote the critic I. Chicherov. Vladimir Lakshin catches him on the fact that not a word is said about Meyerhold in "One Day ...": for the critic, this name is "just a sign of especially refined spiritual interests, a kind of testimony of intelligence " 22 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., Preambles, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M .: OOO "Agency" KRPA Olymp ", 2004. S. 116-170. ⁠ ... In Shukhov's attitude to Caesar Markovich, whom Ivan Denisovich is ready to serve and from whom he expects reciprocal services, there is indeed irony - but, according to Lakshin, it is connected not with Caesar's intelligence, but with his isolation, all with the same ability to settle down, with preserved and in the camp with snobbery: "Caesar turned around, stretched out his hand for the porridge, at Shukhov and did not look, as if the porridge itself had come by air, - and for his own: - But listen, art is not what, but how." It is no coincidence that Solzhenitsyn places a "formalistic" judgment about art and a dismissive gesture side by side: in the value system of "One Day ..." they are quite interconnected.

Vorkutlag. Republic of Komi, 1930-40s

Is Ivan Denisovich an autobiographical hero?

Some readers tried to guess in which of the heroes Solzhenitsyn brought himself out: “No, this is not Ivan Denisovich himself! And not Buinovsky ... Or maybe Tyurin?<…> Is it possible that a paramedic-writer who, without leaving good memories, is still not so bad? " 23 "Dear Ivan Denisovich! .." Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M .: Russkiy put, 2012. P. 47. ⁠ His own experience is the most important source for Solzhenitsyn: he entrusts his feelings and ordeals after his arrest to Innokenty Volodin, the hero of the novel In the First Circle; the second of the main characters of the novel, a prisoner of the sharashka Gleb Nerzhin, is emphatically autobiographical. The Gulag Archipelago contains several chapters describing Solzhenitsyn's personal experience in the camp, including attempts by the camp administration to persuade him to covertly collaborate. Both the novel Cancer Ward and the story Matryonin's yard are autobiographical, not to mention Solzhenitsyn's memoirs. In this respect, the figure of Shukhov is quite far from the author: Shukhov is a "simple", uneducated person (unlike Solzhenitsyn, a teacher of astronomy, he, for example, does not understand where a new month comes from after a new moon in the sky), a peasant, an ordinary not battalion commander. However, one of the effects of the camp is precisely that it erases social differences: the ability to survive, to preserve oneself, to earn the respect of comrades in misfortune becomes important (for example, the former chiefs Fetyukov and Der are one of the most disrespectful people in the camp). In accordance with the essay tradition, which Solzhenitsyn voluntarily or involuntarily followed, he chose not an ordinary, but a typical ("typical") hero: a representative of the most extensive Russian estate, a participant in the most massive and bloody war. “Shukhov is a generalized character of the Russian common man: resilient,“ malevolent ”, hardy, jack of all trades, crafty and kind. A brother of Vasily Tyorkin, ”wrote Korney Chukovsky in his review of the story.

A soldier by the name of Shukhov actually fought alongside Solzhenitsyn, but did not sit in the camp. The camp experience itself, including construction work BUR Heavy duty barrack. ⁠ and the thermal power station, Solzhenitsyn took from his own biography - but admitted that everything that his hero went through would not have endured in full: “Probably, I would not have survived eight years in the camps, if as a mathematician I had not been taken for four years on the so-called sharashku ".

Exiled Alexander Solzhenitsyn in a camp jacket. 1953 year

Can One Day in Ivan Denisovich be called a Christian work?

It is known that many prisoners retained their religiosity in the most cruel conditions of Solovki and Kolyma. Unlike Shalamov, for whom the camp is an absolutely negative experience, convincing that God not 24 Bykov D.L. Soviet Literature. Advanced course. M .: PROZAIK, 2015.S. 399-400, 403. ⁠ The camp helped Solzhenitsyn to strengthen his faith. During his life, including after the publication of Ivan Denisovich, he composed several prayers: in the first of them he thanked God for being able to “send a reflection of Your rays to Mankind”. Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann (1921-1983) - clergyman, theologian. From 1945 to 1951, Schmemann taught Church history at the Parisian St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute. In 1951 he moved to New York, where he worked at St. Vladimir's seminary, and in 1962 became its leader. In 1970, Schmemann was elevated to the rank of Protopresbyter - the highest priestly title for married clergy. Fr Schmemann was a renowned preacher, wrote works on liturgical theology, and for almost thirty years hosted a program on religion on Radio Liberty. ⁠ , quoting this prayer, calls Solzhenitsyn a great Christian a writer 25 Schmemann A., Protopriest. The great Christian writer (A. Solzhenitsyn) // A. Schmemann, Protopriest. Fundamentals of Russian Culture: Conversations on Radio Liberty. 1970-1971. M .: Publishing house of the Orthodox St. Tikhon University for the Humanities, 2017.S. 353-369. ⁠ .

Researcher Svetlana Kobets notes that “Christian toposes are scattered throughout the text of One Day. There are hints of them in images, linguistic formulas, conditional notation " 26 Kobets S. The Subtext of Christian Asceticism in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // The Slavic and East European Journal. 1998. Vol. 42. No. 4. P. 661. ⁠ ... These allusions bring into the text a "Christian dimension", which, according to Kobets, ultimately verifies the ethics of the characters, and the prisoner's habits that allow him to survive date back to Christian asceticism. Hardworking, humane, the heroes of the story, who have retained the moral core, with such a view become like martyrs and righteous (recall the description of the legendary old prisoner Ju-81), and those who make themselves comfortable, for example, Caesar, “do not get a chance for spiritual awakening" 27 Kobets S. The Subtext of Christian Asceticism in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // The Slavic and East European Journal. 1998. Vol. 42. No. 4. P. 668. ⁠ .

One of Shukhov's fellow prisoners is the Baptist Alyoshka, a reliable and devout believer, who believes that the camp is a test that serves to save the human soul and God's glory. His conversations with Ivan Denisovich go back to The Brothers Karamazov. He tries to instruct Shukhov: he notices that his soul “asks to pray to God,” explains that “it is not necessary to pray for a parcel to be sent or for an extra portion of gruel.<…> We need to pray for the spiritual: so that the Lord removes the evil scum from our hearts ... ”The story of this character sheds light on the Soviet repression against religious organizations. Alyoshka was arrested in the Caucasus, where his community was located: both he and his comrades received twenty-five-year sentences. Baptists and Evangelical Christians In 1944, Evangelical Christians and Baptists living in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus united into one confession. The doctrine of Evangelical Christians - Baptists is based on the Old and New Testaments, there is no division into clergy and laity in the confession, and baptism is carried out only at a conscious age. ⁠ actively persecuted in the USSR since the early 1930s, during the Great Terror, the most important figures of Russian Baptism - Nikolai Odintsov, Mikhail Timoshenko, Pavel Ivanov-Klyshnikov and others - perished. Others, whom the authorities considered less dangerous, were given the standard camp terms of that time - 8-10 years. The bitter irony is that these terms still seem feasible to the prisoners of 1951, “happy”: “This period was so happy before: everyone was given ten on the right. And from the forty-ninth such a streak went - all twenty-five, regardless. " Alyoshka is sure that the Orthodox Church “has moved away from the Gospel. They are not imprisoned, or they are given five years because their faith is not strong. " However, Shukhov's own faith is far from all church institutions: “I willingly believe in God. Only now I do not believe in heaven and hell. Why do you think we are fools, promise us heaven and hell? " He notes to himself that "Baptists like to agitate, like political instructors."

Drawings and comments by Euphrosyne Kersnovskaya from the book "How Much is a Man". In 1941, Kersnovskaya, a resident of the captured USSR Bessarabia, was convoyed to Siberia, where she spent 16 years

From whom is the narrative in One Day?

The impersonal narrator of "Ivan Denisovich" is close to Shukhov himself, but not equal to him. On the one hand, Solzhenitsyn reflects the thoughts of his hero and actively uses improperly direct speech. More than once or twice what is happening in the story is accompanied by comments that seem to come from Ivan Denisovich himself. Behind the shouts of Cavtorang Buinovsky: “You have no right to undress people in the cold! You ninth article According to the ninth article of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1926, "social protection measures cannot be aimed at causing physical suffering or humiliation of human dignity and do not set themselves the task of retribution and punishment." ⁠ you don't know the Criminal Code! .. "follows the comment:" They have. They know. You don't know it yet, brother. " In her work on the language of One Day, the linguist Tatiana Vinokur gives other examples: “The foreman is shaking everything. It shakes, it will not calm down in any way, "" our column reached the street, and the Mekhzavodskaya one disappeared behind the residential block. " Solzhenitsyn resorts to this technique when he needs to convey the feelings of his hero, often physical, physiological: “Nothing, it's not very cold outside,” or about a piece of sausage that Shukhov gets in the evening: “With her teeth! With your teeth! Meat spirit! And real meat juice. There, in the stomach went. " Western Slavic scholars speak about the same, using the terms "indirect internal monologue", "depicted speech"; British philologist Max Hayward traces this technique to the tradition of Russian tale 28 Rus V. J. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Point of View Analysis // Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes. Summer-Fall 1971. Vol. 13. No. 2/3. P. 165, 167. ⁠ ... For the narrator, the narrative form and the folk language are also organic. On the other hand, the narrator knows what Ivan Denisovich cannot know: for example, that paramedic Vdovushkin is not writing a medical report, but a poem.

According to Vinokur, Solzhenitsyn, constantly shifting his point of view, achieves "the merger of the hero and the author" - and by switching to the first-person pronouns ("our column has reached the street"), he rises to that "higher level" of such a merger, "which gives him the ability to especially persistently emphasize their empathy, again and again to remind of their direct involvement in the depicted events " 29 Vinokur T. G. About the language and style of the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich" // Questions of culture of speech. 1965. no. 6.S. 16-17. ⁠ ... Thus, although biographically Solzhenitsyn is not at all equal to Shukhov, he can say (just as Flaubert spoke of Emma Bovary): "Ivan Denisovich is me."

How does language work in One Day of Ivan Denisovich?

Several language registers are mixed in One Day of Ivan Denisovich. Usually, the first thing to remember is the "folk" speech of Ivan Denisovich himself and the narrative speech of the narrator himself close to it. In "One Day ..." readers for the first time come across such characteristic features style of Solzhenitsyn, as an inversion ("And the Socialist town is a bare field, in snowy hills"), the use of proverbs, sayings, phraseological units ("trial is not a loss", "a warm cold unless he understands?", "in the wrong hands is always thicker radish" ), vernacular compression In linguistics, compression is understood as a reduction, compression of language material without significant damage to the content. ⁠ in the conversations of the characters ("guarantee" - a guarantee ration, "Vecherka" - the newspaper "Vechernyaya Moscow") 30 Dozorova D. V. Compressive word-formation means in A. I. Solzhenitsyn's prose (based on the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich") // A. I. Solzhenitsyn's legacy in the modern cultural space of Russia and abroad (to the 95th anniversary of the writer's birth ): Sat. mat. Int. scientific-practical conf. Ryazan: Concept, 2014.S. 268-275. ⁠ ... The abundance of improperly direct speech justifies the essay style of the story: we get the impression that Ivan Denisovich does not explain everything to us on purpose, like a guide, but is simply used to explain everything to himself in order to maintain clarity of mind. At the same time, Solzhenitsyn repeatedly resorts to the author's neologisms, stylized as vernacular, - the linguist Tatyana Vinokur calls examples such as "a little bit", "to get ahead", "to breathe", "to breathe": "This is a renewed composition of the word, many times increasing his emotional significance, expressive energy, freshness of his recognition ”. However, although the "folk" and expressive lexemes in the story are remembered most of all, the main body is still "general literary vocabulary" 31 Vinokur T. G. About the language and style of the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich" // Questions of culture of speech. 1965. no. 6.S. 16-32. ⁠ .

In the camp speech of the peasant Shukhov and his comrades, thieves' jargon is deeply ingrained ("godfather" is an operative, "knock" is to inform, "kondey" is a punishment cell, "six" is the one who serves others, "ass" is a soldier on the watchtower, " moron "- a prisoner who got a job in a camp), the bureaucratic language of the punitive system (BUR - a high-security barrack, PPCh - a planned production unit, a chief of the guard). At the end of the story, Solzhenitsyn placed a small dictionary with an explanation of the most common terms and jargon. Sometimes these registers of speech merge: for example, the slang "zek" is formed from the Soviet abbreviation "z / k" ("prisoner"). Some former prisoners wrote to Solzhenitsyn that in their camps they always pronounced "zeká", but after "One Day ..." and "The Gulag Archipelago" the Solzhenitsyn version (possibly occasionalism Occasionalism is a new word coined by a specific author. Unlike neologism, occasionalism is used only in the author's work and does not go into widespread use. ⁠ ) established itself in the language.

Read this story and learn it by heart - every citizen of all two hundred million citizens of the Soviet Union

Anna Akhmatova

A separate layer of speech in One Day ... is swear words that shocked some of the readers, but met with understanding among the prisoners, who knew that Solzhenitsyn did not thicken the colors here. Upon publication, Solzhenitsyn agreed to resort to bills and euphemisms A word or expression that replaces a rude, awkward expression. ⁠ : replaced the letter "x" with "f" (this is how the famous "fujaslice" and "fuyomnik" appeared, but Solzhenitsyn was able to defend the "laughs"), somewhere he put out points ("Stop, ... poison!", "I will not I can wear it with this! ”). Swearing every time serves to express expression - a threat or "withdrawal of the soul." The main character's speech is mostly free from swearing: the only euphemism is unclear, the author's or Shukhov's own: “Shukhov nimbly hid from the Tatar around the corner of the barrack: if you get caught a second time, he will again rake. It's funny that in the 1980s, "One Day ..." was removed from American schools because of swearing. "I received indignant letters from my parents: how can you print such an abomination!" - recalled Solzhenitsyn 32 Solzhenitsyn A.I. Butting a calf with an oak: Essays on literary life. M .: Consent, 1996.S. 54. ⁠ ... At the same time, writers of uncensored literature, for example Vladimir Sorokin, whose "Day of the Oprichnik" was clearly influenced by Solzhenitsyn's story, just reproached him - and other Russian classics - for being too bashful: "In Solzhenitsyn's" Ivan Denisovich "we observe the life of prisoners, and - not a single swear word! Only - "butter-fujaslitsa". The men in Tolstoy's War and Peace do not utter a single swear word. It's a shame!"

Camp drawings by artist Hulot Sooster. Sooster served time in Karlag from 1949 to 1956

"One Day in Ivan Denisovich" - Story or Novel?

Solzhenitsyn emphasized that his work is a story, but the editors of Novy Mir, obviously embarrassed by the volume of the text, suggested that the author publish it as a story. Solzhenitsyn, who did not think that publication was possible at all, agreed, which he later regretted: “I shouldn't have conceded. In our country, the boundaries between genres are being washed away and forms are being devalued. "Ivan Denisovich" is of course a story, albeit a large one, loaded. " He proved this by developing his own theory of prose genres: “Smaller than a story, I would single out a short story - easy to build, clear in plot and thought. A story is what they most often try to call a novel in our country: where there are several plot lines and even an almost obligatory length in time. And the novel (disgusting word! Is it possible otherwise?) Differs from the story not so much in volume, and not so much in length in time (it even became concise and dynamic), as in the capture of many destinies, the horizon of the gaze and the vertical thoughts " 32 Solzhenitsyn A. I. Butting a calf with an oak: Essays on literary life. M .: Consent, 1996.S. 28. ⁠ ... Stubbornly calling "One Day ..." a story, Solzhenitsyn clearly has in mind the essay style of his own writing; in his understanding, the content of the text matters for a genre name: one day, covering the characteristic details of the environment, is not material for a novel or story. Be that as it may, it is hardly possible to defeat the correctly noted tendency of “washing away” the boundaries between genres: despite the fact that the architecture of “Ivan Denisovich” is indeed more characteristic of a story, because of its volume, one would like to call it something larger.

Potter in Vorkutlag. Komi Republic, 1945

Laski Diffusion / Getty Images

What brings One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich closer to Soviet prose?

Of course, according to the time and place of writing and publication, One Day in Ivan Denisovich is Soviet prose. This question, however, is about something else: about the essence of the "Soviet".

Emigre and foreign criticism, as a rule, read "One Day ..." as anti-Soviet and anti-socialist realist composition 34 Hayward M. Solzhenitsyn's Place in Contemporary Soviet Literature // Slavic Review. 1964. Vol. 23. No. 3. Pp. 432-436. ⁠ ... One of the most famous emigrant critics Roman Gul Roman Borisovich Gul (1896-1986) - critic, publicist. During the Civil War, he participated in the Ice Campaign of General Kornilov, fought in the army of Hetman Skoropadsky. Since 1920, Gul lived in Berlin: published a literary supplement to the newspaper Nakanune, wrote novels about the Civil War, collaborated with Soviet newspapers and publishing houses. In 1933, freed from a Nazi prison, he emigrated to France, where he wrote a book about his stay in a German concentration camp. In 1950, Gul moved to New York and began work at New Journal, which he later became head of. Since 1978 he has published his memoir trilogy “I took Russia away. Apology for emigration ". ⁠ In 1963, he published an article entitled “Solzhenitsyn and Socialist Realism” in Novy Zhurnal: “... The work of the Ryazan teacher Alexander Solzhenitsyn seems to cross out all socialist realism, that is, all Soviet literature. This story has nothing to do with it. " Gul assumed that Solzhenitsyn's work, “bypassing Soviet literature ... came directly from pre-revolutionary literature. From - Silver Age... And this is her signaling value" 35 Gul R. B. A. Solzhenitsyn and socialist realism: “One day. Ivan Denisovich "// Gul RB Odvukon: Soviet and emigrant literature. N.-Y .: Most, 1973.S. 83. ⁠ ... The fantastic, "folk" language of the story Gul brings closer even "not with Gorky, Bunin, Kuprin, Andreev, Zaitsev", but with Remizov and an eclectic set of "writers of the Remizov school": Pilnyak, Zamyatin, Shishkov Vyacheslav Yakovlevich Shishkov (1873-1945) - writer, engineer. Since 1900, Shishkov conducted expeditionary studies of Siberian rivers. In 1915 Shishkov moved to Petrograd and, with the assistance of Gorky, published a collection of short stories "Siberian Skaz". In 1923, The Vataga, a book about the Civil War, was published; in 1933, the Gloom River, a novel about life in Siberia at the turn of the century. The last seven years of his life, Shishkov worked on the historical epic "Emelyan Pugachev". ⁠ , Prishvin, Klychkov Sergei Antonovich Klychkov (1889-1937) - poet, writer, translator. In 1911, Klychkov's first poetry collection "Songs" was published, in 1914 - the collection "The Hidden Garden". In the 1920s, Klychkov became close to the "new peasant" poets: Nikolai Klyuev, Sergei Yesenin, with the latter he shared a room. Klychkov is the author of the novels "Sugar German", "Chertukhinsky Balakir", "Prince of Peace", he was engaged in translations of Georgian poetry and Kyrgyz epos. In the 1930s, Klychkov was branded as a "kulak poet", in 1937 he was shot on false charges. ⁠ ... "The verbal fabric of Solzhenitsyn's story is akin to Remiz's love for words with ancient roots and for the popular pronunciation of many words"; like Remizov, “in Solzhenitsyn's dictionary there is a very expressive fusion of archaism with ultra-Soviet colloquial speech, a mixture of soviet " 36 Gul R. B. A. Solzhenitsyn and socialist realism: “One day. Ivan Denisovich "// Gul RB Odvukon: Soviet and emigrant literature. N.-Y .: Most, 1973.S. 87-89. ⁠ .

Solzhenitsyn himself wrote all his life about socialist realism with contempt, calling it "an oath of abstinence from truth " 37 Nicholson M. A. Solzhenitsyn as a "socialist realist" / author. per. from English. B. A. Erkhova // Solzhenitsyn: Thinker, historian, artist. Western criticism: 1974-2008: Sat. Art. / comp. and ed. entry Art. E. E. Erickson, Jr.; comment. O. B. Vasilevskaya. M .: Russian way, 2010.S. 476-477. ⁠ ... But he resolutely did not accept modernism, avant-gardism, considering it a forerunner of "the most destructive physical revolution of the 20th century"; philologist Richard Tempest believes that “Solzhenitsyn learned to use modernist means in order to achieve antimodernist goals " 38 Tempest R. Alexander Solzhenitsyn - (anti) modernist / per. from English. A. Skidana // New literary review. 2010.S. 246-263. ⁠ .

Shukhov is a generalized character of the Russian common man: resilient, "malevolent", hardy, jack of all trades, crafty - and kind

Korney Chukovsky

In turn, Soviet reviewers, when Solzhenitsyn was officially in favor, insisted on a completely Soviet and even "party" character of the story, seeing in it almost the embodiment of a social order to expose Stalinism. Gul could be ironic about this, the Soviet reader could have assumed that the "correct" reviews and prefaces were written for a diversion, but if "One Day ..." was stylistically completely alien to Soviet literature, it would hardly be published.

For example, because of the culmination of "One Day of Ivan Denisovich" - the construction of a thermal power station - many copies were broken. Some former prisoners saw falsity here, while Varlam Shalamov considered the labor zeal of Ivan Denisovich to be quite plausible (“Subtly and faithfully shown the passion for the work of Shukhov ...<…> It is possible that this kind of passion for work saves people "). And the critic Vladimir Lakshin, comparing “One Day ...” with “unbearably boring” production novels, saw in this scene a purely literary and even didactic device - Solzhenitsyn managed not only to captivatingly describe the work of a bricklayer, but also to show the bitter irony of the historical paradox: “ When a picture of free labor, labor by inner motivation, seems to flood onto the picture of cruel and compulsory labor, this makes us understand deeper and more sharply what people like our Ivan Denisovich are worth, and what a criminal absurdity to keep them away from their home, under the protection of automatic weapons behind the barbed wire " 39 Lakshin V. Ya. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // Criticism of the 50-60s of the XX century / comp., Preambles, notes. E. Yu. Skarlygina. M .: OOO "Agency" KRPA Olymp ", 2004. S. 143. ⁠ .

Lakshin subtly captures the affinity of the famous scene with the schematic culminations of socialist realist novels, and the way in which Solzhenitsyn deviates from the canon. The fact is that both socialist realist standards and Solzhenitsyn's realism are based on a certain invariant originating in the Russian realistic tradition of the 19th century. It turns out that Solzhenitsyn is doing the same thing that semi-official Soviet writers do - just not much better, more original (not to mention the context of the scene). American researcher Andrew Wachtel believes that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich “should be read as a socialist realist work (at least based on the understanding of socialist realism in 1962)”: “I in no way belittle the achievements of Solzhenitsyn ...<...> he ... used the most erased cliches socialist realism and used them in a text that almost completely overshadowed its literary and cultural Denisovich " 41 Solzhenitsyn A. I. Publicism: In 3 volumes. Yaroslavl: Upper Volga, 1997. T. 3. P. 92-93. ⁠ ... But even in the text of The Archipelago, Ivan Denisovich appears as a person who knows camp life well: the author enters into a dialogue with his hero. So, in the second volume, Solzhenitsyn invites him to tell him how to survive in a convict camp, “if they don't take him as a paramedic, or as an orderly, they won't even let him be released for a day? If he has a lack of literacy and an excess of conscience to get a job as a jerk in the zone? " Here's how, for example, Ivan Denisovich talks about the "bastard" - that is, deliberately bringing himself to illness 42 Solzhenitsyn A. I. GULAG Archipelago: In 3 volumes. M .: Center "New World", 1990. T. 2. P. 145. ⁠ :

“It’s another matter - a little bit, to be crippled so that I can live and remain disabled. As they say, a minute of patience is a year of turning. Break my leg, and then so that it grows together incorrectly. Drinking salty water will swell. Or smoking tea is against the heart. And drinking tobacco infusion is good against the lungs. Only with a measure must be done so as not to over-bridge and not jump into the grave through disability. "

In the same recognizable colloquial, "fairy tale" language, full of camp idioms, Ivan Denisovich talks about other ways to escape from murderous work - to get into the OP (Solzhenitsyn has a "rest", officially - a "health center") or to get an act - a petition for release for health. In addition, Ivan Denisovich was entrusted to tell about other details of the camp life: “Like tea in the camp instead of money goes ... How chifir - fifty grams per glass - and visions in my head”, and so on. Finally, it is his story in The Archipelago that precedes the chapter on women in the camp: “And the best thing is not to have a partner, but a partner. A camp wife, a prisoner. As the saying goes - marry» 43 Solzhenitsyn A. I. GULAG Archipelago: In 3 volumes. M .: Center "New World", 1990. T. 2. P. 148. ⁠ .

In the "Archipelago" Shukhov is not equal to Ivan Denisovich from the story: he does not think about the "bastard" and chifir, does not remember women. Shukhov "Archipelago" is an even more collective image of a seasoned convict, who retained the speech style of an earlier character.

Review letter; their correspondence lasted for several years. “The story is like poetry - everything in it is perfect, everything is expedient. Every line, every scene, every characteristic is so laconic, clever, subtle and deep that I think that from the very beginning of its existence, Novy Mir did not print anything so integral, so strong, - wrote Shalamov to Solzhenitsyn. -<…> Everything in the story is authentic. " Unlike many readers who did not know the camp, he praised Solzhenitsyn for using abuse ("camp life, camp language, camp thoughts are inconceivable without swearing, without swearing the very last word").

Like other former prisoners, Shalamov noted that Ivan Denisovich's camp was “easy”, not quite real ”(unlike Ust-Izhma, a real camp that“ makes its way in the story like white steam through the cracks of a cold barrack ”):“ In the prison camp where Shukhov is sitting, he has a spoon, a spoon for a real camp is an extra tool. Both the soup and the porridge are of such consistency that you can drink across the board, there is a cat walking around the medical unit - unbelievable for a real camp - the cat would have been eaten long ago. “There are no blatars in your camp! - he wrote to Solzhenitsyn. - Your camp is lice free! The security service is not responsible for the plan, does not knock it out with butts.<…> The bread is left at home! Eat with spoons! Where is this wonderful camp? If only for a year to sit there in due time. " All this does not mean that Shalamov accused Solzhenitsyn of fiction or embellishment of reality: Solzhenitsyn himself admitted in a reply letter that his camp experience, in comparison with Shalamov's, “was shorter and easier,” in addition, from the very beginning, Solzhenitsyn intended to show “the camp is very successful very happy day. "

In the camp, that's who dies: who licks the bowls, who hopes for the medical unit, and who goes to the godfather to knock

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Shalamov saw the only falsity of the story in the figure of the cavalier Buinovsky. He believed that the typical figure of a disputant who shouts to the convoy "You have no right" and the like was only in 1938: "Everyone who shouted like that was shot." It seems improbable to Shalamov that the squadron did not know about the camp reality: “Since 1937, for fourteen years, shootings, repressions, arrests have been going on before his eyes, his comrades are taken, and they disappear forever. And kavtorang does not even bother to think about it. He drives on the roads and sees the camp watchtowers everywhere. And he doesn't bother to think about it. Finally, he went through the investigation, because he got to the camp after the investigation, and not before. And yet I did not think of anything. He could not see this under two conditions: either the cavtorang spent fourteen years on a long voyage, somewhere in a submarine, fourteen years without rising to the surface. Or for fourteen years I handed over to the soldier thoughtlessly, and when they took it myself, it became bad. "

This remark rather reflects the outlook of Shalamov, who went through the most terrible camp conditions: people who retained some kind of well-being or doubts after the experience they had experienced aroused suspicion in him. Dmitry Bykov compares Shalamov with a prisoner of Auschwitz, the Polish writer Tadeusz Borovsky: “The same lack of faith in a person and the same refusal of any consolation - but Borovsky went further: he put every survivor under suspicion. Once he survived, it means that he betrayed someone or something gave up " 44 Bykov D.L. Soviet Literature. Advanced course. M .: PROZAIK, 2015.S. 405-406. ⁠ .

In his first letter, Shalamov instructs Solzhenitsyn: "Remember, the most important thing: the camp is a negative school from the first to the last day for anyone." Not only the correspondence between Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn, but - first of all - the Kolyma Tales are able to convince anyone who thinks that in “One Day of Ivan Denisovich” inhuman conditions are shown: there are many, many worse.

list of references

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• Vinokur T. G. About the language and style of the story by A. I. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich" // Questions of culture of speech. 1965. no. 6, pp. 16–32.
• Gul RB A. Solzhenitsyn and socialist realism: "One day of Ivan Denisovich" // Gul RB Odvukon: Soviet and emigrant literature. N.-Y .: Most, 1973. S. 80–95.

• Dozorova D. V. Compressive word-formation means in A. I. Solzhenitsyn's prose (based on the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich") // A. I. Solzhenitsyn's legacy in the modern cultural space of Russia and abroad (to the 95th anniversary of the writer's birth ): Sat. mat. Int. scientific-practical conf. Ryazan: Concept, 2014. P. 268–275.
• "Dear Ivan Denisovich! .." Letters from readers: 1962-1964. M .: Russian way, 2012.
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• Lakshin V. Ya. "New World" in the time of Khrushchev. Diary and incidental (1953-1964). Moscow: Book Chamber, 1991.
• Medvedev Zh. A. Ten years after "One day of Ivan Denisovich". L .: MacMillan, 1973.
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• Solzhenitsyn A.I.Publicism: In 3 volumes.Yaroslavl: Upper Volga, 1997.
• The word makes its way: Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974 / entry. L. Chukovskaya, comp. V. Glotser and E. Chukovskaya. M .: Russian way, 1998.
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• Chukovsky K. I. Diary: 1901–1969: In 2 volumes. Moscow: OLMA-Press Star World, 2003.
• Schmemann A., Protopriest. The great Christian writer (A. Solzhenitsyn) // A. Schmemann, Protopriest. Fundamentals of Russian Culture: Conversations on Radio Liberty. 1970-1971. M .: Publishing house of the Orthodox St. Tikhon University for the Humanities, 2017. S. 353–369.
• Hayward M. Solzhenitsyn's Place in Contemporary Soviet Literature // Slavic Review. 1964. Vol. 23. No. 3. Pp. 432-436.
• Kobets S. The Subtext of Christian Asceticism in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich // The Slavic and East European Journal. 1998. Vol. 42. No. 4. Pp. 661–676.
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The entire list of references

Solzhenitsyn's story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was created in 1959. The author wrote it in between work on the novel "The First Circle". In just 40 days Solzhenitsyn created One Day in Ivan Denisovich. The analysis of this work is the topic of this article.

The subject of the work

The reader of the story gets to know life in the camp zone of a Russian peasant. However, the theme of the work is not limited to camp life. In addition to the details of survival in the zone, "One Day ..." contains details of life in the village, described through the prism of the hero's consciousness. In the story of Tyurin, the foreman, there is evidence of the consequences to which collectivization in the country led. In various disputes between camp intellectuals, various phenomena of Soviet art are discussed (theatrical premiere of the film "John the Terrible" by S. Eisenstein). Many details of the history of the Soviet period are mentioned in connection with the fate of Shukhov's comrades in the camp.

The theme of the fate of Russia is the main theme of the work of such a writer as Solzhenitsyn. "One Day in Ivan Denisovich", whose analysis interests us, is no exception. In it, local, particular topics are organically inscribed in this general problem. In this respect, the theme of the fate of art in a state with a totalitarian system is indicative. So, artists from the camp paint free pictures for the authorities. The art of the Soviet era, according to Solzhenitsyn, became part of the general apparatus of oppression. An episode of Shukhov's reflections on the village artisans producing dyed "carpets" supported the motive of the degradation of art.

The plot of the story

Chronic is the plot of the story created by Solzhenitsyn ("One Day in Ivan Denisovich"). Analysis shows that although the plot is based on events lasting only one day, the proposed biography of the protagonist can be represented by his memories. Ivan Shukhov was born in 1911. He spent his pre-war years in the village of Temgenevo. His family has two daughters (his only son died early). Shukhov has been at war since its first days. He was wounded, then captured, from where he managed to escape. In 1943 Shukhov was convicted of a trumped-up case. He served 8 years at the time of the plot. The action of the work takes place in Kazakhstan, in a convict camp. One of the January days in 1951 was described by Solzhenitsyn ("One Day in Ivan Denisovich").

Analysis of the character system of the work

Although the main part of the characters is outlined by the author in laconic means, Solzhenitsyn managed to achieve plastic expressiveness in their depiction. We observe the multicolored personality, the richness of human types in the work "One Day in Ivan Denisovich". The heroes of the story are depicted succinctly, but at the same time they remain in the reader's memory for a long time. Sometimes only one or two fragments, expressive sketches, are enough for a writer. Solzhenitsyn (the author's photo is presented below) is sensitive to the national, professional and class specifics of the human characters he created.

The relationship between the characters is subject to a strict camp hierarchy in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. A summary of the entire prison life of the protagonist, presented in one day, allows us to conclude that there is an insurmountable chasm between the camp administration and the prisoners. Noteworthy is the absence in this story of the names, and sometimes even the surnames of many guards and overseers. The individuality of these characters is manifested only in the forms of violence, as well as in the degree of ferocity. On the contrary, despite the depersonalizing numbering system, many of the prisoners in the consciousness of the hero are present with names, and sometimes with patronymics. This suggests that they have retained their individuality. Although this testimony does not apply to the so-called snitches, idiots and wicks described in the work "One Day in Ivan Denisovich". These heroes also have no names. Overall, Solzhenitsyn talks about how the system unsuccessfully tries to turn people into parts of a totalitarian machine. Especially important in this respect, in addition to the protagonist, are the images of Tyurin (foreman), Pavlo (his assistant), Buinovsky (cavtorang), Baptist Alyoshka and the Latvian Kilgas.

The protagonist

In the work "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" the image of the main character is quite remarkable. Solzhenitsyn made him an ordinary peasant, a Russian peasant. Although the circumstances of camp life are deliberately "exceptional", the writer in his hero deliberately accentuates the external inconspicuousness, "normalcy" of behavior. According to Solzhenitsyn, the fate of the country depends on the innate morality and natural resilience of the common man. In Shukhov, the main thing is an ineradicable inner dignity. Ivan Denisovich, even serving his more educated fellow prisoners, does not change age-old peasant habits and does not drop himself.

His working skill is very important in characterizing this hero: Shukhov managed to acquire his own comfortable trowel; in order to cast the spoons later, he hides the pieces, he carved a folding knife and skillfully hid it. Further, seemingly insignificant details of this hero's existence, his demeanor, a kind of peasant etiquette, everyday habits - all this in the context of the story acquires the meaning of values \u200b\u200bthat allow a human being to survive in difficult conditions in a person. Shukhov, for example, always wakes up 1.5 hours before the divorce. He belongs to himself in these morning minutes. It is important for the hero this time of actual freedom also because it is possible to earn extra money.

"Cinematic" compositional techniques

One day contains in this work a clot of a person's fate, a squeeze from his life. It is impossible not to notice the high degree of detail: each fact in the narrative is split into small components, of which most of them are presented in close-up. The author uses "cinematic". He scrupulously, unusually carefully monitors how, before leaving the barracks, his hero dresses or devours to the skeleton of a small fish caught in the soup. Even such a seemingly insignificant gastronomic detail, like fish eyes floating in a soup, is awarded a separate "shot" in the story. You will be convinced of this by reading the work "One Day in Ivan Denisovich". The content of the chapters of this story, with careful reading, allows you to find many similar examples.

The term "term"

It is important that in the text of the works, concepts such as "day" and "life" come closer to each other, sometimes becoming almost synonymous. Such a rapprochement is carried out by the author through the concept of "term", which is universal in the narrative. The term is the punishment meted out to the prisoner, and at the same time the internal routine of life in the prison. In addition, what is most important, it is a synonym for the fate of a person and a reminder of the last, most important period of his life. Thus, temporary designations acquire a deep moral and psychological connotation in the work.

Scene

The setting is also very significant. The space of the camp is hostile to the prisoners, especially the open areas of the zone are dangerous. The prisoners rush to run between the rooms as soon as possible. They are afraid of being caught in this place, rushing to dash under the protection of the barracks. In contrast to the heroes of Russian literature who love distance and breadth, Shukhov and other prisoners dream of the cramped shelter. For them, the barrack turns out to be a home.

What was one day of Ivan Denisovich?

A description of one day spent by Shukhov is directly given by the author in the work. Solzhenitsyn showed that this day in the life of the protagonist was successful. Speaking about him, the author notes that the hero was not put in a punishment cell, the brigade was not kicked out to Sotsgorodok, he cooked porridge for lunch, the foreman closed the interest well. Shukhov laid the wall merrily, did not fall for the hack-saw, in the evening he worked at Caesar's and bought tobacco. The protagonist moreover, he did not get sick. An unclouded day passed, "almost happy". Such is the work of his main events. The final words of the author sound just as epically calm. He says that there were such days in Shukhov's term 3653 - 3 extra days were added due to

Solzhenitsyn refrains from open display of emotions and loud words: it is enough for the reader to develop appropriate feelings. And this is guaranteed by the harmonious structure of the story about the strength of man and the strength of life.

Conclusion

Thus, in the work "One Day of Ivan Denisovich" the problems were posed very urgent for that time. Solzhenitsyn recreates the main features of the era when the people were doomed to incredible hardships and torment. The history of this phenomenon begins not in 1937, marked by the first violations of the norms of party and state life, but much earlier, with the beginning of the existence of the totalitarian regime in Russia. Thus, the work presents a bunch of fates of many Soviet people who were forced to pay for years of torture, humiliation, and labor camps for loyal and honest service. The author of the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" raised these problems so that the reader thinks about the essence of the phenomena observed in society and draws some conclusions for himself. The writer does not moralize, does not call for something, he only describes reality. The work only benefits from this.

History of the creation of "One day of Ivan Denisovich"

"One day of Ivan Denisovich" is connected with one of the facts of the author's own biography - the Ekibastuz special camp, where in the winter of 1950-51 this story was created on general works. The protagonist of Solzhenitsyn's story is Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, an ordinary prisoner of the Stalinist camp.

In this story, the author, on behalf of his hero, narrates about only one day out of three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days of Ivan Denisovich's term. But even this day will be enough to understand what kind of situation reigned in the camp, what orders and laws existed, to learn about the life of prisoners, to be horrified by this. The camp is a special world that exists separately, parallel to ours.

There are completely different laws here, differing from the ones we are used to, everyone here survives in their own way. Life in the zone is shown not from the outside, but from the inside by a person who knows about it not by hearsay, but from his own personal experience. That is why the story is striking in its realism. "Glory to you, Lord, another day has passed!" - Ivan Denisovich finishes his narration, - "A day has passed, unclouded, almost happy."

On this day, Shukhov was really lucky: the brigade was not kicked out to Sotsgorodok to pull the wire in the cold without heating, passed the punishment cell, got off only by washing the floors in the supervisor's room, got an extra portion of porridge for lunch, the job was familiar - to put the wall on the CHP, put it down cheerfully, passed safely shmon and carried a hacksaw to the camp, worked in the evening at Caesar's, bought two glasses of samosad from a Latvian, and most importantly, he did not get sick, he survived. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was sentenced to ten years in a trumped-up case: he was accused of returning from captivity with a secret German mission, and what exactly it was - no one could come up with. Shukhov suffered the same fate as millions of other people who fought for the Motherland, but at the end of the war, from the prisoners of the German camps, they turned out to be prisoners of the Stalinist camps of the GULAG.

This is a real jackal, living off the scraps of others. Licking other people's plates, looking into a person's mouth in anticipation of being left with something is a common thing for him. He cannot be disgusted, even the prisoners refuse to work with him, calling him mom. In the zone, he didn't even have a drop of male pride, he cries openly when they beat him for licking plates. Indeed, everyone chooses the path of survival for himself, but the most unworthy path is the path of the informer Panteleev, who lives off denunciations of other prisoners.

Under the pretext of illness, he remains in the zone and voluntarily knocks the opera. Such people are hated in the camp, and the fact that three were killed did not surprise anyone. Death is common here, but life turns into nothing. This is the most frightening thing.

In contrast to them, Ivan Denisovich "was not a jackal even after eight years of common work - and the further, the stronger he was affirmed." He does not beg, does not humiliate himself. He tries to earn everything only by his own labor: he sews slippers, presents boots to the foreman, takes a queue for parcels, for which he receives his honestly earned. Shukhov retained the concept of pride and honor, so he never falls to the level of Fetyukov, because he just earns money, and does not try to serve, "grease".

Like any peasant, Shukhov is a surprisingly economic man: he cannot just walk past a piece of a hacksaw, knowing that he can make a knife out of it, and this is an opportunity to earn extra money. The former captain of the second rank, Buinovsky, who "looks at camp work as at sea service, deserves respect: it is said to do, then to do it."

He does not try to evade general work, he is used to doing everything conscientiously, and not for show. Shukhov says that he has "grown tight over the last month, but pulls the team." Buinovsky cannot come to terms with the arbitrariness of the guard, so he starts a dispute with Volkovsky about the article of the criminal code, for which he received ten days in solitary confinement.

The brigadier Tyurin is handsome, who ended up in the camp only because his father was a fist. For the brigade, he is like a dear father, always trying to defend the interests of the brigade: to get more bread, a profitable job. In the morning Tyurin gives whoever needs it so that his people are not kicked out for the construction of Sotsgorodok.

Ivan Denisovich's words that "a good foreman will give a second life" are completely suitable for Tyurin's characterization as a foreman. These people, in spite of everything, survive by their labor. They would never have been able to choose for themselves the path of survival of Fetyukov or Panteleev.

Alyoshka the Baptist evokes pity. He is very kind, but very weak-minded - "only those who do not want to do not command him." The conclusion for him is the will of God, in his conclusion he sees only the good, he himself says that "here there is time to think about the soul." But Alyoshka cannot adapt to camp conditions and, according to Ivan Denisovich, will not last long here. The grip that Alyoshka the Baptist lacks is possessed by Gopchik, a sixteen-year-old boy who is cunning and does not miss the opportunity to snatch a piece. He was convicted for carrying milk to the forest for Bendera. In the camp they predict a great future for him: "From Gopchik, the camp prisoner will be the right one ... less like a bread-slicer they do not predict his fate."

In a special position is Caesar Markovich, a former director who did not manage to shoot his first film when he got to the camp. He receives parcels from his will, so he can afford many of the things that other prisoners cannot: wears a new hat and other forbidden things, works in an office, avoids general work.

Although Caesar has been in this camp for quite a long time, his soul is still in Moscow: he discusses premieres in theaters with other Muscovites, cultural news of the capital. He avoids the rest of the prisoners, adheres only to Buinovsky, remembering the existence of others only when he needs their help.

Largely due to his detachment from the real world, in my opinion, and sending from the will, he manages to survive in these conditions. Personally, this person does not evoke any feelings in me. He has a business acumen, knows who and how much to give.

"One day of Ivan Denisovich" Solzhenitsyn

"One day of Ivan Denisovich" analysis of the work - theme, idea, genre, plot, composition, characters, problems and other issues are disclosed in this article.

The story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" is a story about how a person from the people relates himself to the forcibly imposed reality and its ideas. In it, in a condensed form, the camp life is shown, which will be described in detail in other, major works of Solzhenitsyn - in the novel "The Gulag Archipelago" and "The First Circle". The story itself was written during the work on the novel In the First Circle, in 1959.

The work is a solid opposition to the regime. This is the cell of a large organism, a terrible and inexorable organism of a large state, so cruel to its inhabitants.

There are special dimensions of space and time in the story. Camp is a special time that is almost motionless. The days in the camp are rolling, but the term is not. Day is a measure of measurement. The days are like two peas in a pod similar to each other, all the same monotony, thoughtless mechanicalness. Solzhenitsyn tries to fit the whole camp life in one day, and therefore he uses the smallest details in order to recreate the whole picture of being in the camp. In this regard, they often talk about a high degree of detail in the works of Solzhenitsyn, and especially in short prose - stories. Each fact hides a whole layer of camp reality. Each moment of the story is perceived as a frame of a cinematic film, taken separately and viewed in detail, under a magnifying glass. "At five o'clock in the morning, as always, the ascent struck - with a hammer on the rail at the headquarters barracks." Ivan Denisovich slept. I always got up on the rise, but today I did not get up. He felt that he was ill. They take everyone out, build everyone, everyone goes to the dining room. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov's number is Ш-5h. Everyone tries to enter the dining room first: they pour the thickest first. After eating, they are rebuilt and searched.

The abundance of details, as it seems at first glance, should burden the narrative. After all, there is almost no visual action in the story. But this, nevertheless, does not happen. The reader is not burdened by the narration, on the contrary, his attention is riveted to the text, he tensely follows the course of events, real and happening in the soul of one of the heroes. Solzhenitsyn does not need to resort to any special technique to achieve this effect. It's all about the material of the image itself. Heroes are not fictional characters, but real people... And these people are placed in such conditions where they have to solve problems on which their life and destiny depend in the most direct way. To a modern person, these tasks seem insignificant, and therefore an even more terrible feeling remains from the story. As V. V. Agenosov writes, “every little thing for the hero is literally a matter of life and death, a matter of survival or dying. Therefore, Shukhov (and every reader with him) sincerely rejoices at every particle found, every extra crumb of bread. "

There is one more time in the story - metaphysical, which is also present in other works of the writer. At this time, there are other values. Here the center of the world is transferred into the consciousness of the convict.

In this regard, the topic of metaphysical understanding of a person in captivity is very important. Young Alyoshka teaches the already middle-aged Ivan Denisovich. By this time, all Baptists were imprisoned, but not all of the Orthodox. Solzhenitsyn introduces the theme of religious comprehension of man. He is even grateful to the prison for the fact that it turned him towards spiritual life. But Solzhenitsyn more than once noticed that with this thought, millions of voices arose in his mind, saying: "Because you say so, you survived." These are the voices of those who laid down their lives in the Gulag, who did not live to see the moment of liberation, did not see the sky without an ugly prison net. The bitterness of loss is evident in the story.

Individual words in the very text of the story are also associated with the category of time. For example, these are the first and last lines. At the very end of the story, he says that Ivan Denisovich's day was a very successful day. But then he sadly notes that "there were three thousand six hundred fifty-three such days in his period from bell to bell."

The space in the story is also presented in an interesting way. The reader does not know where the space of the camp begins and where it ends, it seems as if it has filled the whole of Russia. All those who ended up behind the wall of the Gulag, somewhere far away, in an unattainable distant city, in a village.

The very space of the camp turns out to be hostile to the prisoners. They are afraid of open areas, strive to cross them as quickly as possible, to hide from the eyes of the guards. Animal instincts awaken in man. This description completely contradicts the canons of the Russian classics of the 19th century. The heroes of that literature feel comfortable and easy only when they are free, they love space, distance, associated with the breadth of their soul and character. Solzhenitsyn's heroes flee from space. They feel much safer in cramped cells, in stuffy bars, where they can at least breathe more freely.

The main character of the story is a man of the people - Ivan Denisovich, a peasant, a front-line soldier. And this was done deliberately. Solzhenitsyn believed that it is the people of the people who make history in the end, move the country forward, and bear the guarantee of true morality. Through the fate of one person - Ivan Denisovich - the author shows the fate of millions, innocently arrested and convicted. Shukhov lived in the village, which he lovingly remembers here, in the camp. At the front, he, like thousands of others, fought with full dedication, not sparing himself. After being wounded - again to the front. Then German captivity, from where he miraculously managed to escape. And for this he now ended up in the camp. He was accused of espionage. And what kind of assignment the Germans gave him, neither Ivan Denisovich himself nor the investigator knew: “What kind of assignment - neither Shukhov himself could think of, nor the investigator. So they left it simple - the task. " At the time of the story, Shukhov had been in the camps for about eight years. But this is one of those few who have not lost their dignity in the grueling conditions of the camp. In many ways, he is helped by his habits of a peasant, an honest worker, a peasant. He does not allow himself to humiliate himself in front of other people, lick dishes, inform on others. His age-old habit of respecting bread is visible even now: he keeps bread in a clean cloth, takes off his hat before eating. He knows the value of labor, loves it, is not lazy. He is sure: "who knows two things with his hands, he will pick up ten more." In his hands business is arguing, frost is forgotten. He carefully treats the tools, anxiously follows the laying of the wall, even in this forced work. The day of Ivan Denisovich is a day of hard work. Ivan Denisovich knew how to do carpentry, could work as a locksmith. Even in forced labor, he showed diligence, laid a beautiful flat wall. And those who did not know how to do anything carried sand in wheelbarrows.

Solzhenitsyn's hero has in many ways become the subject of vicious accusations among critics. According to them, this integral folk character should be practically ideal. Solzhe-nitsyn depicts an ordinary person. So, Ivan Denisovich professes camp wisdom, laws: “Grunt and rot. But if you resist, you will break. " This was met with negative criticism. Particular bewilderment was caused by the actions of Ivan Denisovich, when, for example, he took a tray from a weak convict, deceived the cook. It is important to note here that he does this not for personal benefit, but for his entire brigade.

There is another phrase in the text that caused a wave of discontent and extreme surprise from critics: "I myself did not know whether he wanted his will or not." This thought was misinterpreted as a loss of hardness, an inner core, by Shukhov. However, this phrase echoes the idea that prison awakens spiritual life. Ivan Denisovich already has values \u200b\u200bin life. Prison or freedom will not change them either, he will not refuse it. And there is no such captivity, such a prison that could enslave the soul, deprive it of freedom, self-expression, life.

The value system of Ivan Denisovich is especially visible when comparing him with other characters who are imbued with the camp laws.

Thus, in the story, Solzhenitsyn recreates the main features of the era when the people were doomed to incredible torment and hardship. The history of this phenomenon does not actually begin in 1937, when the so-called violations of the norms of state and party life began, but much earlier, from the very beginning of the existence of the totalitarian regime in Russia. Thus, the story presents a clot of the fate of millions of Soviet people, forced to pay for honest and loyal service with years of humiliation, torture, and labor camps.

Plan

1. Memories of Ivan Denisovich about how and why he ended up in a concentration camp. Memories of German captivity, of the war.
2. Memories of the protagonist about the village, about the peaceful pre-war period.
3. Description of the life of the camp.
4. A successful day in the camp life of Ivan Denisovich.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn is a writer and publicist who entered Russian literature as an ardent opponent of the communist regime. In his work, he regularly touches on the topic of suffering, inequality and the insecurity of people in front of Stalin's ideology and the current state system.

We present to your attention an updated version of the review of Solzhenitsyn's book -.

The work that A.I. Solzhenitsyn became popular, the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" became. True, the author himself later made an amendment, saying that in terms of genre specifics, this is a story, albeit on an epic scale reproducing the gloomy picture of Russia at that time.

Solzhenitsyn A.I. in his story, he acquaints the reader with the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a peasant and a military man who ended up in one of the many Stalinist camps. The whole tragedy of the situation is that the hero went to the front the very next day after the attack of Nazi Germany, was captured and miraculously escaped from him, but when he reached his own, he was recognized as a spy. This is what the first part of the memoirs is devoted to, which also includes a description of all the hardships of the war, when people had to feed on the cornea from the hooves of dead horses, and the command of the Red Army, without a reproach of conscience, threw ordinary soldiers to die on the battlefield.

The second part shows the life of Ivan Denisovich and hundreds of other people staying in the camp. Moreover, all the events of the story take only one day. However, the narrative contains a large number of references, retrospections and mentions of the life of the people, as if by chance. For example, the correspondence with my wife, from which we learn that the situation in the village is no better than in the camp: there is no food or money, the residents are starving, and the peasants survive by dyeing fake carpets and selling them to the city.

In the course of reading, we learn why Shukhov was considered a saboteur and a traitor. Like most of those in the camp, he was convicted without guilt. The investigator forced him to confess to treason, who, by the way, could not even think of what task the hero was doing, supposedly helping the Germans. At the same time, Shukhov had no choice. If he refused to admit what he had never done, he would have received a "wooden pea coat", and since he went to meet the investigation, then "at least you will live a little more."

Numerous images also take an important part of the plot. These are not only prisoners, but also warders, who differ only in how they treat the inmates. For example, Volkov carries with him a huge and thick whip - one blow of it tears a large area of \u200b\u200bskin to blood. Another bright, though minor character - Caesar. This is a kind of authority in the camp, who previously worked as a director, but was repressed without filming his first film. Now he is not averse to talking with Shukhov about contemporary art and throwing in a small work.

In his story, Solzhenitsyn reproduces the life of the prisoners, their gray life and hard work with extreme precision. On the one hand, the reader does not encounter blatant and bloody scenes, but the realism with which the author approaches the description makes him horrified. People are starving, and the whole meaning of their life comes down to getting themselves an extra slice of bread, since it will not be possible to survive in this place on soup made of water and frozen cabbage. The inmates are forced to work in the cold, and they have to work in a race to “pass the time” before sleeping and eating.

Everyone is forced to adapt to the realities, find a way to deceive the guards, steal or secretly sell something. For example, many inmates make small knives out of tools, then exchange them for food or tobacco.

Shukhov and everyone else in these terrible conditions look like wild animals. They can be punished, shot, beaten. It remains only to be smarter and smarter than armed guards, try not to lose heart and be true to your ideals.

The irony is that the day, which is the time of the story, is quite successful for the protagonist. He was not put in a punishment cell, he was not forced to work with a team of builders in the cold, he managed to get a portion of porridge at lunchtime, they did not find a hacksaw with him in the evening, and he also earned some money from Caesar and bought tobacco. True, the tragedy is that three thousand six hundred fifty-three such days have accumulated over the entire period of imprisonment. What's next? The term is coming to an end, but Shukhov is sure that the term will either be extended or, worse, will be sent into exile.

Characteristics of the main character of the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich"

The main character of the work is a collective image of a simple Russian person. He is about 40 years old. He hails from an ordinary village, which he recalls with love, noting that it was better before: they ate potatoes "with whole pans, porridge - with cast iron ...". He spent 8 years in prison. Before entering the camp, Shukhov fought at the front. He was wounded, but after recovering he returned to the war.

Character appearance

There is no description of his appearance in the text of the story. The emphasis is on clothing: mittens, pea jacket, felt boots, wadded trousers, etc. Thus, the image of the protagonist becomes depersonalized and becomes the personification of not only an ordinary prisoner, but also a modern inhabitant of Russia in the mid-20th century.

He is distinguished by a sense of pity and compassion for people. He worries about the Baptists, who received 25 years in the camps. He regrets the degraded Fetikov, noting that “he will not live up to his term. He does not know how to put himself. " Ivan Denisovich even sympathizes with the guards, because they have to watch on the towers in frost or strong winds.

Ivan Denisovich understands his plight, but does not stop thinking about others. For example, he refuses parcels from home, forbidding his wife to send food or things. The man realizes that his wife has a very hard time - she alone raises children and monitors the economy during the difficult war and post-war years.

A long life in a convict camp did not break him. The hero sets certain boundaries for himself, which in no case can be violated. It is trite, but makes sure not to eat fish eyes in the stew or always take off the cap while eating. Yes, he had to steal, but not from his comrades, but only from those who work in the kitchen and mock inmates.

Ivan Denisovich is distinguished by honesty. The author points out that Shukhov never took or gave a bribe. Everyone in the camp knows that he never shirks from work, always tries to earn extra money and even sews slippers for other prisoners. In prison, the hero becomes a good bricklayer, mastering this profession: "with Shukhov, you can't dig into distortions or seams." In addition, everyone knows that Ivan Denisovich is a jack of all trades and can easily get down to any business (he patches quilted jackets, pours spoons from an aluminum wire, etc.)

Positive image Shukhova is created throughout the story. His habits of a peasant, an ordinary worker, help him overcome the severity of imprisonment. The hero does not allow himself to humiliate himself in front of the guards, lick dishes or denounce others. Like any Russian person, Ivan Denisovich knows the price of bread, tremblingly keeping it in a clean rag. He accepts any work, loves it, is not lazy.

What, then, is such an honest, noble and hardworking person doing in a prison camp? How did he and several thousand other people get here? It is these questions that arise from the reader as he gets acquainted with the main character.

The answer to them is quite simple. It's all about an unjust totalitarian regime, the consequence of which is that many worthy citizens find themselves prisoners of concentration camps, forced to adapt to the system, live away from their families and be doomed to long torment and hardship.

Analysis of A.I. Solzhenitsyn "One day of Ivan Denisovich"

To understand the idea of \u200b\u200ba writer, it is necessary to pay special attention to the space and time of the work. Indeed, the story depicts the events of one day, even describing in great detail all the everyday moments of the regime: getting up, breakfast, lunch, dinner, divorce to work, the road, the work itself, the constant search by the guards and many others. etc. This also includes a description of all prisoners and guards, their behavior, life in the camp, etc. For people, real space turns out to be hostile. Every prisoner does not like open places, tries to avoid meeting with the guards and quickly hide in the barracks. The prisoners are not restricted only to barbed wire. Even the opportunity to look at the sky is not available to them - searchlights are constantly blinded.

However, there is also another space - internal. This is a kind of memory space. Therefore, the most important are constant references and memories, from which we learn about the situation at the front, suffering and countless deaths, the disastrous situation of peasants, as well as the fact that those who survived or escaped from captivity, who defended their homeland and their citizens, often in the eyes of the government they become spies and traitors. All these local themes form a picture of what is happening in the country as a whole.

It turns out that the artistic time and space of the work is not closed, not limited to only one day or the territory of the camp. As it becomes known at the end of the story, there are already 3653 such days in the life of the hero, and how many will be ahead is completely unknown. This means that the name "one day of Ivan Denisovich" can be easily perceived as an allusion to modern society. A day in the camp is impersonal, hopeless, it becomes for the prisoner the personification of injustice, powerlessness and withdrawal from everything individual. But is all this characteristic only for this place of detention?

Apparently, according to A.I. Solzhenitsyn, Russia at that time is very similar to a prison, and the task of the work becomes, if not to show deep tragedy, then at least to categorically deny the position of what is described.

The author's merit is that he not only describes what is happening with amazing accuracy and with a lot of details, but also refrains from open display of emotions and feelings. Thus, he achieves his main goal - he gives the reader his own assessment of this world order and understand all the senselessness of the totalitarian regime.

The main idea of \u200b\u200bthe story "One day of Ivan Denisovich"

In his work A.I. Solzhenitsyn recreates the main picture of life in that Russia, when people were doomed to incredible torment and hardship. Before us opens a whole gallery of images that personify the fate of millions of Soviet citizens who were forced for faithful service, hard and diligent work, faith in the state and adherence to ideology to pay with imprisonment in horrible concentration camps scattered throughout the country.

In his story, he portrayed a situation typical for Russia when a woman has to take on the concerns and responsibilities of a man.

Be sure to read the banned in the Soviet Union novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which explains the reasons for the author's disillusionment with the communist system.

In a short story, the list of injustices of the state system is disclosed very accurately. For example, Ermolaev and Klevshin went through all the hardships of the war, were captured, worked underground, and received 10 years in prison as a reward. Gopchik, a young boy who recently turned 16, is proof that repression is indifferent even to children. The images of Alyoshka, Buinovsky, Pavel, Caesar Markovich and others are no less revealing.

Solzhenitsyn's work is imbued with hidden, but evil irony, exposing the other side of the life of the Soviet country. The writer touched upon an important and topical problem, which was banned all this time. At the same time, the story is imbued with faith in the Russian person, his spirit and will. Having condemned the inhuman system, Alexander Isaevich created a truly realistic character of his hero, who is able to withstand all the torments with dignity and not lose his humanity.